Today is the anniversary of the birthday of Charles Dickens, one of the greatest English writers of all times. While his stories can be maddeningly slow—I just finished reading David Copperfield and oh how I chafed at the pace—there can be no denying that Dickens was a brilliant writer who came up with vivid, memorable characters that still have a hold on us today. (Scrooge, Fagin, Tiny Tim, and Uriah Heep come to mind, but there are many others.)

Food, especially the lack thereof, thrums through many of his novels, and this is a good reminder for modern readers that it’s only very recently that food has been so abundant in western countries. In Dickens’s time—early to mid-1800s—poor people were frequently hungry, and in David Copperfield, Dickens writes movingly of young David’s hunger as he tries to buy enough food with his meager salary and doesn’t always succeed. (David is ten years old, virtually abandoned by his cruel stepfather, and is working in a factory.)

However, perhaps the most famous food scene from a Dickens’s novel comes from Oliver Twist, when young Oliver, who lives in a horribly grim workhouse asks, “Please, sir, I want some more.”

What Oliver wants is more gruel, which he, of course doesn’t get.

Here is a snappy version of that scene from the 1968 movie Oliver!

 

My favorite lines? “Food, Glorious food. Don’t care what it looks like. Burnt, underdone, crude. Don’t care what the cook’s like.”

Happy birthday, Mr. Dickens!